There's no sign yet of what Sam Allardyce will do next, though I hear there's a campaign to make him Chancellor because he's so good at cutting interest rates.

Big Sam said he didn't see his Newcastle exit coming - the only other man who didn't was Stevie Wonder.

After years of underachievement on Tyneside, Big Sam rode into town pledging to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative but did the exact opposite.

His chief strategy seemed to be to stop his opponents performing and to an extent it worked - but only because his fiercest opponents were his own players.

Most of the game's best managers yesterday ruled themselves out of taking the Newcastle job. Most of the game's worst managers have already had it.

Wednesday night's mad gamble on Harry Redknapp came as a surprise. Mad gambles are normally made BY Harry Redknapp. The Pompey chief says he's happy on the south coast but he said that when he was at Southampton and look where he ended up...on the south coast with Portsmouth.

Given the stick Redknapp copped from Betfair punters for the betting background to that move, it's inconceivable that he was telling porkies when he distanced himself from Toon yesterday.

So maybe the rush to back him was way wide of the mark. Significantly, though, Redknapp was still a defiant odds-on shot (5-6) on Betfair last night.

Jose Mourinho reportedly threw his hat into the ring yesterday but it obliterated St James' Park, while another shock contender emerged last night in the shape of Frank Warren, who reckons he can get Joey Barton a title shot.

Whoever the new manager is, he gets a 6-4 quote from Ladbrokes to win a major trophy while at Newcastle and he's 1-6 to last longer than Allardyce, who is 11-8 with Hills to turn up next as a manager of a Premier League club.